


Behind Enemy Lines

by raendown



Series: MadaTobiWeek2018 [7]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, POV Alternating, at least while i'm here and you can't stop me, what's yours is mine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 17:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15562455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: Madara and Tobirama both wake up in very different places from where they went to sleep. The reason for the switch does not make them any calmer.





	Behind Enemy Lines

Tobirama was absolutely certain that he had gone to sleep last night in his own bed, in his own room, wearing his own clothes. Waking to find all of those things different was already enough to raise his mental hackles without the added confusion when he noticed that his skin itself had changed.

Lifting one arm to wriggle the fingers of his left hand confirmed that he was indeed looking at himself and not another body draped over his but it did nothing to help him understand what the hell was going on. As far as he was aware, there was no known treatment for albinism which would allow him to look like everyone else, let alone any condition which would revert him to ‘normal’ over the course of one night. Something incredibly strange had to be going on.

Right away several theories came to life in his mind, each of them with reasons they might be true but other reasons they might be false. Several of them included pranks he suspected Touka or Hashirama might be trying to play. They were all disproved, however, when the bedroom door slammed open and a familiar yet unexpected figure came crashing through with a shit-eating grin on his face. Amidst the instinctive panic, Tobirama noted that Izuna looked wildly different when he wasn’t hollering battle cries.

“Nii-san! Save me!”

Without further ado Izuna launched himself on to the bed, landing across a frozen Tobirama’s legs and scurrying up behind his body. Should he be defending himself? Was he under attack right now? It didn’t seem like it with the way Izuna curled in to a ball just behind his shoulder blades and buried his face in – since when did he have long hair?

“IZUNA!” The voice that hollered from down the hall was at least angry enough to sound familiar to him. When a head of messy brown hair appeared in the doorway he was just barely able to recognize the face, if not put a name to it. “Grow the fuck up, you asshole! Are we children!?”

“You’re the one sleeping with frogs in his bed, cousin!” Izuna snickered, doubly so when the man in the doorway twitched violently and shook his fist.

“Because you put them there!”

Neither of them were even looking at him. They didn’t seem to notice that their sworn enemy was sitting between them, uninjured and unrestrained, presumably in the heart of the Uchiha compound. The red and white fan theme of the room’s décor seemed to support that assumption. He would have thought this was all some wild fever dream but for how realistic the hands tugging on the back of his shirt felt.

“What…?” he tried to ask, getting out no more than the one word before choking on it and touching his throat. Even his voice was different! It rasped where it usually growled in the early morning, familiar and yet not at the same time. Izuna let go of his shirt to wrap both arms around his chest without seeming to care how the action caused him to stiffen.

“Nii-san, please save me!” he said again.

“You can’t hide behind your brother forever!” The messy-haired man looked at him directly for the first time. “Madara-sama, please. How long will you let him act like a child this way?”

Tobirama stared at the man and wondered if he might have heard wrong because that sounded as though he had just been called ‘Madara’ and the only person he knew of by that name wasn’t here – and it certainly wasn’t him! But the man only continued to stare at him with exasperation and a great deal of suffering in his eyes. Could they truly believe he was their crazy eyed clan leader?

“Uh…” He flinched when his voice came out raspy again, still halfway between foreign and familiar. Then Izuna snickered and nuzzled in to his neck and it all fell in to place with a nearly audible _click_.

Long hair, a body not his own, a room and a bed entirely different from where he fell asleep, and two Uchiha acting as though he were someone else; Tobirama swallowed thickly around the knowledge that he was currently possessing the body of Uchiha Madara with no idea how he’d gotten here or how to return to his own. If he were here did that mean that Madara was in his body at the moment? Had they switched places or was Madara’s consciousness shunted to the side and dormant while he tried on a new meat suit or something?

He wasn’t given much time to come to terms with his current situation. The man across the room was staring at him expectantly and the longer he went without answering the more Izuna murmured worriedly in to his hair.

“Well? Isn’t it time he grew up?”

“Uh…” Tobirama wracked his brain, trying to think of something that Madara might say, desperate not to have his true identity discovered. “He looks fairly grown to me.”

“Madara-sama!”

“Ha! Take that, Hikaku!” Izuna blew a noise raspberry, sending this Hikaku man storming away with a twitch in both eyes. “Thanks Nii-san. I know I can always count on you.” The arms around his torso tightened in to what was surely meant as a warm loving hug despite the fact that Tobirama spent the entire duration of it expecting a knife through the ribs. Honestly, how was it not glaringly obvious to either of them that he was not who they thought he was?

Staying hidden was the best course of action, obviously, but he could hardly believe it was this easy.

“Come on, Nii-san. Oba-san said she would be making your favorite for breakfast but you can’t dawdle or she’s gonna throw her spoon at your head again.”

Izuna crawled out from behind him and flashed a conspiratorial grin before disappearing in the opposite direction as his cousin had. Tobirama watched him go with dread heavy in his stomach. He didn’t want to leave this room. Fooling two people hadn’t gone as badly as he would have thought but leaving the room meant he would have to fool an entire clan and he had no idea how he was supposed to go about doing that. All he knew about Madara was that he screamed a lot and he favored his gunbai over all other weapons.

A light sparked inside his brain, sending Tobirama scrambling to extract himself from the sheets as he made lightning fast adjustments to his spur of the moment plan. Then the unexpected weight of so much more hair than he was used to sent him sprawling down on the floor and Tobirama vowed that he would figure out what the hell was going on so that he could fix this situation as soon as possible.

-

Madara was screaming as soon as he woke up. His skin was on fire from head to toe, his eyes burned as soon as they opened, and all the weapons under his pillow were gone so he had nothing to throw at the ceiling to make himself feel better.

Although everyone who lived in the main house was long used to him abusing his own vocal chords at all hours of the day, several sets of feet could be heard thundering down the hall almost immediately. He curled father in to himself and screeched louder as the door opened. Whatever was wrong with him was affecting his voice as well because he sounded different. His voice was deeper, more gravelly, and he gnashed his teeth around another scream out of sheer offense that it actually sounded nicer than his normal voice.

He paid no attention to the figure approaching his bed. If it was Izuna confessing to leaving itching powder in his sheets then there was going to be a very violent end to the little spree of practical jokes he had been inflicting on all of them lately. When a familiar voice murmured soothingly from down by his feet, however, he shot upright in bed with panic flooding his system.

“Did they wash your sheets with the wrong soap again, Tobi?”

That was most certainly not Izuna.

“What!?”

“I’ll find out who did the laundry yesterday and talk to them about being more careful about your soaps, if you want.” Senju Hashirama hovered at the end of the bed with a sympathetic smile, reaching out towards him with glowing hands. “Just look at your skin! Hold on, I’ll help!”

“Don’t touch me!” Madara shrieked, scuttling away and backing himself in to the corner. From the corner of his eye he could see several other people gathered in the doorway and watching him with naked concern on their faces. All of them were Senju. Evidently he had woken up in the middle of his worst nightmare made real.

His childhood friend stared back at him in surprise. “But if I don’t help then the itching won’t stop. Why are you yelling so much, Tobi?”

“Stop calling me Tobi! I’m not Tobi! Who the hell is – I don’t care! You can clearly see who I am!”

“Uhm…you just look like yourself, Otouto.”

“I am not your little brother!” When the other man opened his mouth to protest Madara raised a hand to point a threatening finger at him. Then he gaped at his hand, all covered in patches of snow white skin and angry red hives. Peering further down revealed a well-toned bare chest in the same condition.

“Well you don’t have to be mean about it,” Hashirama sniffled. “I’m not the one who mixed up your soaps in the laundry so don’t yell at me for it!”

Lifting his other hand, Madara stared at both of them in horror. Those weren’t his hands. And now that he was able to think past the terrible fire licking at him all over, he finally noticed that the weight of his hair was missing, leaving his neck feeling like rubber bouncing around too easily. “What is going on? Where am I? What have you done to me?”

“It’s just a laundry mistake…”

“Uh, Hashirama?” A new voice spoke up. “I don’t think that’s Tobes there with you.”

“Eh? Of course it is.” Hashirama turned away from him to send a quizzical look towards one of the bystanders in the hallway. A woman with her hair up in a top knot – the one Izuna sometimes murmured about in his sleep, the dirty rat hypocrite – crossed her arms with a look which managed to be both severe and incredibly amused.

“Well it’s his body, sure. But I don’t think it’s him on the inside.”

Silence fell as everyone turned to stare at Madara where he was pressed in to the corner. He hissed at them. “Go fuck yourself, Senju!” Then he scowled when he realized that he had just confirmed the woman’s theory for her.

He was unprepared for the massive human body suddenly throwing itself on top of him.

“Madara! I’d know that sneer anywhere! It is you, isn’t it my old friend?”

“Get off me! We’re not friends! We’re enemies! Stop hugging me you cretin!”

“Of course we’re friends! You’ll always be my best friend, Madara, no matter how far apart life takes us!” Hashirama squeezed harder and Madara noted that the oaf was also using the hug to sneak in a little bit of healing for his irritated skin. “But how did you get here in my – WHERE IS MY BROTHER IF YOU’RE IN HIS BODY?!”

Grunting, he shoved the other man away from him so he could wriggle a finger in one ear. “I don’t know! Quit yelling!”

“Ugh, they’re probably soulmates,” the woman piped up again, disgust dripping from her words.

Madara froze and stared at her in horror. Absolutely not. Such a thing could not be true. There was no way that he was soulmates with someone like Senju Tobirama. The very idea of it was both impossible and preposterous and he simply refused.

Could one refuse the universe’s choice of soulmate for oneself? He’d find a way.

Well, he would figure that out right after he figured out how to get Hashirama to stop crying and reaching out for more hugs. Before he had time to blink there were two thick arms around his chest, constricting like vines until he barely had enough air for shouting. Hashirama sobbed against his chest even as one of his hands continued to wander, healing as it went, and Madara protested both actions with what little oxygen was available to him.

Even if Tobirama really was his soulmate he still had no intentions of allowing that connection to give Hashirama the excuse to grope him at will.

-

Breakfast was tense. Incredibly tense. So tense it was surprising that the very air around him wasn’t holding its breathe in anticipation of some kind of violent explosion.

Of course, that tension only seemed to exist to him and not to any of the other people surrounding him in the communal dining hall but that only made it worse somehow. Everyone else who passed him by gave a respectful nod and then scurried away to keep out from under the dark glare he was straining to keep in place. At least they were smart enough to stay out of the way when their lunatic clan Head was angry but he was starting to wonder why so many in his own clan feared these people if they couldn’t even recognize one fake in their midst. An important fake, at that!

The worst part was knowing that he would have been exponentially calmer if he’d been able to find an excuse to stay inside Madara’s rooms until he could figure out what the hell was going on. But Izuna’s words had driven him out in to public knowing that if he stayed hidden away it would be noted as suspicious behavior.

On an entirely unrelated note, apparently Madara’s favorite breakfast was rice with natto and eggs. Tobirama despised the fact that he shared tastes with a madman.

Sitting next to Izuna certainly wasn’t helping his stress levels. For the past forty-five minutes his lifetime rival had been bumping shoulders with him, throwing an arm around his waist, even nuzzling against his shoulder affectionately, and it was driving him insane just forcing himself not to retaliate with something violent. Were his enemies always so stupidly human? He wished he didn’t have to know that. Knowing how affectionate the Uchiha appeared to be as a whole made them closer to human in his eyes and that was quite possibly the worst thing to come out of this whole situation so far.

“Nii-san would you like some more?” Izuna turned to look up at him the same way he remembered Itama and Kawarama used to, full of love and thoughtless devotion, and he scowled deeper at being forced to think of Izuna in any kindly way.

“I’m fine,” he grunted shortly, hoping he was matching Madara’s usual tones.

“You don’t sound fine. Did you have those dreams again?” Izuna deflated, a frown touching his lips when he received no answer and his body leaning away. “Nii-san, how many times have I told you that peace is…it just isn’t realistic? The Senju are animals and faithless ones at that. They might say they want peace but the moment you place any trust in them they are going to betray you. Why can’t you see that you’re wasting your time thinking about such empty, useless dreams?”

Shaking his head, Izuna turned to his own breakfast with a tight expression on his face. It was the same look of tired disappointment Tobirama knew that he himself wore each and every time he’d given that same exact speech to his own brother. Suddenly the world made so much less sense than before.

Was it possible that he had wrongly assumed Madara’s intentions this whole time? The very thought boggled his mind. He had always believed there could be no way Madara would ever want peace, that the madman who faced his brother in battle with such bloodlust in his eyes could not possibly still be hanging on to childhood fantasies. But listening to his own rival now it sounded as though Madara truly did still feel the same as Hashirama did. Could he be facing the same difficulties with the Uchiha as were present in the Senju, a push back against changing time-honored traditions?

The notion that the Senju and the Uchiha could be anything alike sent an instinctual wave of disgust roiling through his belly but for the first time in his life Tobirama pushed that feeling aside and examined the source of it. What was really so bad about the Uchiha as a whole? Sure they had killed many Senju – but so had many other clans when loyalties shifted and alliances broke down yet still he’d found it in him to let bygones be bygones before. Had he himself not slaughtered just as many Uchiha on no more grounds than ‘them bad, us good’?

Feeling incredibly uncomfortable and yet also strangely freed of constraints he hadn’t realized he had shackled himself with, Tobirama sat up straighter and resolved that he would use this most unique opportunity to learn all he could of the Uchiha clan.

He also resolved to never ever speak of this decision to Hashirama. Should his brother ever learn that he had seen the error of his ways and decided to seek a path to peace by sitting in the midst of the Uchiha and calmly listening to what they had to say, he would never hear the end of it. There was only so much crying a man could take from his own brother and he avoided those situations whenever he could. It was _embarrassing_.

Since Izuna didn’t seem like a likely option to get any information from, not without coming off as suspicious at least, Tobirama took a subtle peek at the man seated on the other side of him. It took a minute or so of wracking his memory but eventually he recalled hearing this man referred to as Hikaku at least a few times. He frequently led the patrols between their borders and he seemed a perfect candidate to get a few opinions from if Tobirama could phrase his questions innocuously enough. Now all he needed was a good enough excuse for them to talk just in case their relationship was not a close one.

“Hikaku when did the last patrols come back?”

“A short time after midnight, Madara-sama.”

“Hn. After breakfast I wish to speak with you about their reports.”

“Of course.”

Tobirama nodded brusquely and set his eyes on the bowl of well cooked rice before him. A good breakfast and a bit of well-intentioned snooping; this day was shaping up to be much better than its beginning had promised.

-

Madara’s morning was going terrible. If this was the sort of behavior Tobirama had to deal with every day then he had a grudging new respect for that weasely albino – not that he would ever consider saying so, of course.

After helping to rid him of that most unpleasant rash and ordering someone to strip and rewash those infernal sheets, Hashirama ushered him to breakfast where he had been plying Madara with question after question nonstop ever since. Worse, he continued to stuff his face even while talking and sprayed little bits of omelet all across the table.

Oddly, the Senju didn’t seem to eat together the way his own family did. There were only the members of the head family here in their private dining room but Madara had decided he should be grateful for that. At the moment all he had to deal with was Hashirama’s disgusting table manners along with the intense scrutiny of the man’s wife and elder cousin. It would definitely have been much worse surrounded by the hateful eyes of an entire clan, all of them wondering if they could find a way to get their heir back more quickly.

Which there wasn’t. Touka had been an absolutele gold mine of information about the rare phenomenon of soulmates but Madara hadn’t liked much of what she’d had to say. Apparently he was going to be stuck in another man’s body for a full 24 hours!

“It’s just amazing, isn’t it? I’ll bet it was destiny that we should be friends! My best friend and my little brother; I can still hardly wrap my head around it!”

“Right.” Madara flicked a stray piece of Hashirama’s omelet off his own plate, appetite gone. “Surely you can’t think it will be this easy? Both of our clans are still against peace, no matter that you and I have always advocated for it.”

“See! I _knew_ you still wanted peace! Ha!”

“Tobes is going to get an earful when he gets home,” Touka murmured with a sharp grin.

Madara glanced at her, shuddered, and looked away again. That was not a woman he would ever be fond of, although he thought his brother would probably make fast friends with her if he could manage to lay his blade down for ten minutes. Izuna had ever been fascinated by crazy women. Speaking of his little brother…

“If Izuna figures out that I’m not me then he’ll already be getting an earful right now.”

“You think your brother will notice?”

“Of course he will! How could he not? Izuna knows me better than anyone in the world. I very much doubt your rat of a sibling could imitate me well enough to fool anyone, let alone the people I spend every day with.”

“Don’t call him a rat! He’s your soulmate!” Hashirama stared at him across the table with watery eyes.

Madara stared back with pinched lips and narrowed eyes, lacking any sympathy whatsoever. He could say what he wanted about the man currently running around wearing _his_ body. Perhaps he might be friendlier once everyone was wearing their own skin and they could actually get to know each other, although he wouldn’t advise anyone to hold their breath for it. Just because it was almost definite that peace would come out of this did not mean it was definite that any sort of positive attitudes would.

He was a grumpy asshole and he liked himself that way.

After breakfast Madara spent most of his day wandering around the Senju compound, trailing after Hashirama like a lost puppy. Word must have spread that he was not who he looked like because most of the people who spotted him walking about stopped in their tracks to stare as he went by. Some even came up to their clan Head and tried to ask if it was really a good idea to be showing him around like this, giving ‘the enemy’ a chance to suss out clan secrets or gain an advantage over them in battle.

Not worried in the slightest, Hashirama preached cheerfully to all who questioned him that peace was surely upon them, that Madara clearly shared his dreams for the future, and that they no longer had reason to distrust the man currently walking among them in unintentional disguise. Personally Madara thought his old friend was an idiot. It was much too early to ask any of these people to trust him. It had been less than a week since the last time their clans had met in their latest clash and he was more than certain the only impression they had of him was a screaming madman with a gunbai.

If they only took the time to get to know him they would see that he was a screaming madman with or without the gunbai – although on second thought he wasn’t sure if that would make them feel any safer.

Hashirama showed him all of his favorite spots within the compound, including all of the best hiding places when he felt like dodging a little responsibility for a while, but Madara couldn’t focus on lecturing his friend about that. He was entirely distracted by the way Hashirama managed to work in a little tidbit about Tobirama no matter what he was saying at the time, talking his brother up like a bull at market. It should have been as off-putting as his blathering usually was but Madara was horrified to realize that he was actually listening, waiting impatiently for the next little factoid so he could turn it over in his mind and wonder about how that fit in with his own habits and likes.

He’d already known that he was unlikely to leave this experience with his sanity intact but he hadn’t thought it would have anything to do with Tobirama. The man wasn’t even here to bother him! Madara scowled and continued to insist aloud that he didn’t care one bit for how much Hashirama insisted on bringing up his little brother. For better or for worse – he couldn’t decide – Hashirama ignored him.

Eventually Madara decided to ignore the other man in turn, turning his mind to wondering if his younger sibling had thrown Tobirama in prison yet or if the two of them were tearing the compound apart trying to kill each other.

-

As it turned out, Hikaku was a priceless source of information. The way he led Tobirama to a more private location before immediately starting to whisper in a conspiratorial manner said that he and Madara had spoken of these matters many times before. With no prompting whatsoever he gave Tobirama a full report on all of the clansmen he had taken on the patrol routes lately and what their attitudes towards the Senju seemed to be at the moment. It appeared that Hikaku was Madara’s eyes and ears among the people.

Feeling rather like he’d been handed everything he ever wanted on a silver platter, Tobirama was so elated he very nearly broke character and blew his own disguise. Hikaku gave him quite a strange look for clapping him on the shoulder congenially, forcing him to cover his action with the lame excuse that he had seen a bug. Then he’d had to cover his laughter as Hikaku gave him a very understanding expression and murmured something which gave Tobirama reason to believe that Madara had a fear of ladybugs.

Uchiha Madara was _afraid of ladybugs_. He’d never heard better news in his entire life. Maybe if he wrote a very politely worded letter to the Aburame clan they could ship him a few jars full.

In an attempt to recover from acting so awkwardly, he sent Hikaku off with gruff instructions which amounted to ‘keep up the good work’, if worded less kindly. Then he slowly made his way along the fringes of the Uchiha clan’s territory and used the time alone to digest everything he had learned so far today. Overall the attitude among his so-called mortal enemies was much friendlier than he ever would have guessed. Most of them were as tired of the war as his own people were and there were many who had already come around to the idea of peace, many more who Hikaku opined could be talked around to it should the opportunity finally present itself.

What they all really needed, Tobirama thought to himself, was an unmistakable show of good will, something which might convince both sides that the other had no hidden agenda and truly wished for peace to work between their two clans. It would have to be something that wasn’t engineered by either Madara or Hashirama since both of them were both already known to push for peace. Having someone else step up to support them would have much more impact and encourage others to step forward as well.

The issue was still turning over in his mind with no answers when Izuna found him, head hanging low and wearing a guilty expression.

“Do you…want to go swimming, Nii-san?” Izuna asked, reaching out to tug on the end of Tobirama’s sleeve as his spoke. The fragile look in his eyes and his hesitant body language spoke louder than any words ever could, telling Tobirama that this was his way of apologizing for his earlier behavior and that Tobirama should probably accept the offer. It would be suspicious not to and despite the enmity between them he simply did not have the heart to say no to that face. He too had trouble voicing apologies with words rather than actions.

However, he did have one small problem. If he wanted to go swimming wearing Madara’s body then he would have to get naked wearing Madara’s body. That was not something he was prepared to deal with.

“Er, how about I come and sit with you while you swim?” he bartered, holding his breath until Izuna beamed up at him.

“Sure! Awesome! Come on, Nii-san!”

Before he could blink he was being pulled away in the opposite direction of where he could feel most of the chakra signatures. Sensing with someone else’s chakra network was clunky and awkward but Madara was a more skilled sensor than he thought so he was able to tell that they were well and truly alone by the time they arrived at a wide pond with beautifully clear water. Almost instantly he regretted his conviction not to swim himself. What he wouldn’t give to submerge himself in this tiny oasis.

Instead he was forced to sit primly on the rocks at the edge of the pool and avert his eyes while Izuna stripped down and threw himself in, belly-flopping painfully in his haste. When the other man came up Tobirama was laughing shamelessly as any brother might do.

Considering who his company was, the next few hours were surprisingly pleasant. At some points Tobirama nearly forgot who he was meant to be impersonating and why he was meant to hate Izuna, so well did they get along. Each time he remembered was like a sharp jolt through his mind and a miniature mental crisis. He didn’t want to think of Izuna as a friend when the other man didn’t even know it was him hiding underneath all of this unruly hair!

Finally his companion had enough swimming and easy conversation to deem himself forgiven for his transgression that morning. Tobirama averted his eyes again as the other crawled out of the water and shook himself like a dog, snickering at him for such Inuzuka-like behavior. Once Izuna was dry enough to clothe himself again they made their way back and Tobirama entertained himself by imagining his companion’s reaction if he chose to reveal himself. If nothing else, it would be fun to watch him come to the realization of how many small secrets he’d given away in the course of just half a day.

The two of them went their separate ways once they reached the main family’s home again and Tobirama used the opportunity to slip back in to Madara’s room and pray that he would be left alone for the rest of the day. He still hadn’t come up with any theories for what the hell was going on or how to fix it. As eye-opening as this had all been, he wanted his own body back.

And he really _really_ wanted to know what Madara was doing with it. He only hoped that Hashirama had been able to see the differences in his behavior and figure out that he wasn’t being himself. Kami only knew what kind of madness someone like Uchiha Madara could get up if he were dumped in to the middle of the Senju clan in perfect disguise.

-

Evening could not come quickly enough. Despite that woman Touka’s assurances that this body-swap would only last for twenty-four hours, that everything would go back to how it should be by the time he woke the next morning, Madara was very done with the whole thing already. His own sensing abilities were nothing to shake a stick at but his current body could feel the patrols crawling about the edges of Senju territory without even concentrating. It was driving him mad!

The only thing keeping the potential headache at bay was Hashirama making sure he was constantly occupied. As long as he didn’t stop and allow the sensation of so many chakra signatures at once to overwhelm him then he was able to keep a tenuous grasp on his sanity – or what was left of it anyway.

Unfortunately his friend had chosen to keep him busy by allowing him to take part in the birthday celebrations for one of the other clansmen, some distant cousin several times removed. In his own clan birthdays were celebrated quietly with a small gift and personalized well wishes. He should have guessed that the Senju would be so much louder and gaudier about things. By the time he finished explaining to Hashirama why it was a bad idea to bring him along when everyone already knew he wasn’t who he looked like, he found himself seated around a bonfire watching several young children perform some sort of traditional dance.

Over their heads the sun was only just beginning to set, casting a golden glow on the rather impressive pout Madara kicked up, unaware of the uncanny resemblance he made to Hashirama in doing so. No attention was given to the happy display in front of him until he had grumbled long enough to realize that no one was even paying attention to him anymore. Hashirama was clapping along with the dancers, Touka had moved away to speak with someone else, and Mito was complimenting another woman on the fine edge of the blades in her hair.

It was the perfect opportunity for escape.

Edging backwards slowly so as not to draw anyone’s eye, Madara kept his movements silent until he was far enough back to stand up, turn, and bolt for the main house. He would have much preferred to be spending his time back at home surrounded by his own familiar things but if he couldn’t have that then the next best thing would be to get some god forsaken privacy for the first time all day.

Locking himself in to Tobirama’s room came with other benefits as well, though; benefits such as snooping around the personal items of his worst enemy. It had absolutely nothing to do with his curiosity, he told himself as he opened the desk drawers and flicked through the papers contained inside. He was only taking a closer look in to the motivations of the biggest threat to his own younger brother. There was nothing wrong with learning a few interesting things if he had someone else’s best interests at heart, really.

The first drawer had nothing in it but a few sheets detailing the clan’s accounts for the past month. While there were quite a few things he could have learned from that, he wasn’t really looking for anything he could use to hurt the Senju as a whole, not if he wanted to preserve the peace he was finally so close to achieving. He closed the first drawer and opened the second to find a collection of papers with half-finished doodles overtaking whatever words were on them. Some of them were trees or rivers but the majority of them were Hashirama captured in all sorts of expressions or Touka with various shapes of facial hair added on. Madara snickered and committed those ones to memory. Tobirama was no artist but it looked like he enjoyed his little hobby nonetheless.

When the rest of the desk revealed nothing else deliciously embarrassing Madara turned and flopped down on the floor to check underneath the bed. Right away the lack of dust told him there must be something worthwhile under here and he was not disappointed. His questing fingers discovered two small leather bags, five hair brushes, and a rumpled old shirt with a suspicious stain on the front which made him flush and shove it back under.

Sitting back on his heels, Madara puzzled over the collection of hairbrushes for a moment. Tobirama didn’t have all that much hair, certainly not enough to warrant more than one brush, and he wondered if the man was really so vain as to need several or if he was just stupid enough to keep losing them under the bed. With a shrug he left that thought for later and reached for the leather bags. Opening them revealed another mystery he wasn’t sure counted as embarrassing or not, leaving him staring down at the hidden candy stash in his hands with a frown. Did he have a sweet tooth and not want people to know? Were they a gift he’d been hiding until the right time?

Madara’s investigation was cut off by the sound of footsteps and he cursed himself for not paying attention to the niggling sensation of an approaching chakra signature. Hashirama’s presence was so loud in his head that it was often hard to pinpoint where exactly the man was at any given time.

The door swung open before he had a chance to shove Tobirama’s possessions away and so Madara was left with no option but to sit there awkwardly while Hashirama looked down at him surrounded by his brother’s things, obviously snooping without any excuse other than ‘I was curious’. As usual, however, Hashirama defied expectations by reacting exactly the opposite of how Madara expected him to.

“My hairbrushes!” he exclaimed. “I _knew_ my mokuton wasn’t eating them in my sleep! Brother is a dirty rotten liar!”

As his mouth fell open to wordlessly gape at his friend, Madara processed two thoughts. Firstly that the person whom little children in his clan had nightmares about spent his time at home doodling and playing asinine pranks on his older brother. Secondly that he was screwed – he was _interested_.

-

Tobirama spent the rest of his day holed up in a bedroom that wasn’t his own, keeping his head down and staying out of sight to minimize his interactions with the people he could feel moving about the compound. A few of them came to knock on his door and request his opinion or permission for something small and he dealt with those people as quickly as possible before sending them on their way again, citing a headache. One of them commented on how calm he was for being in a bad mood and it made him scowl. His impression of Madara wasn’t grumpy enough apparently.

During the hours he spent alone he whiled away the time reading the novels he found in a small bookcase at the end of the bed. His eyebrows nearly merged with his hairline when he read the back covers and discovered that a few of them were the same trashy romance books Hashirama ‘secretly’ enjoyed.

The book he first chose to read – purely for blackmail purposes of course – was a story of two star-crossed lovers from different families who wanted to keep them apart. A mere two chapters in the characters met for a steamy midnight rendezvous and he was forced to toss it aside and select another book lest his ears melt off from sheer embarrassment. Tobirama was no virgin but he certainly didn’t need anyone to find him reading about a strapping young hero’s pulsing rod.

He did place the book rather prominently on the nightstand, however. When this debacle was finally over he definitely wanted Madara to know his little secret was not so secret anymore.

When evening fell Tobirama was forced out of the room again by the churning emptiness of his belly and the fact that Izuna came to collect him for dinner. His lifelong rival sat next to him in the communal dining hall and chattered his ear off through two helpings of delicious udon noodles before he was able to retreat once more and claim he wished to go to bed early to fight an imaginary headache. If the world was kind he would wake up and this would all be over, although he didn’t have high hopes for that actually happening. The world was not often kind.

Trying to fall asleep, however, proved more difficult than he thought. Changing clothes on someone else’s body had been just as mortifying as relieving his bladder while holding another man’s _parts_ and by the time he slipped between the sheets his cheeks were on fire again. Tobirama lay as still as possible and stared at the ceiling, trying to calm his mind so that dreams might find him, but he couldn’t seem to get comfortable.

It took fifteen minutes to realize the body he was wearing wanted him to roll over and curl up on his side instead of his usual habit of stretching out on his back. As soon as he did so, face mashing in to the pillow on sheer muscle memory, he was out like a light. The dreams he had wished for might have come but he would never know; the night passed him by like the winking of an eye before he was opening his own, staring up at the ceiling once more with a vaguely confused notion of not being where he was supposed to be. Hadn’t the ceiling had lots of holes in it the last time he woke up?

Only when the door opened and he found someone flopping on to the bed with him for the second morning in a row did he figure out what was different. Hashirama’s excited babbling in his ear meant that he was most certainly not in the same place he had gone to sleep. Which meant…

“I’m home,” he whispered, jolting upright to be met with a grin much too bright for so early in the morning.

“Welcome back brother! How was it? What was the Uchiha compound like? Did you make any new friends? You didn’t hurt anyone did you? Please tell me we’re not even _more_ at war because you and Izuna couldn’t get along! That would be really bad timing, brother, because I just got everyone here calmed down and I really think peace is happening but if you hurt Izuna then Madara will be angry and–”

“Stop! Just shut up for two sage-damned seconds!” Tobirama rubbed at his temple and closed his eyes to draw a deep, calming breath. Then he asked in a deadly quiet voice, “How did you know I was in the Uchiha compound?”

Hashirama blinked at him. “Because Madara was here in your body so of course you were there in his body. Wasn’t he at home? I just assumed. Were you in another town or in the forest or something? Brother you didn’t get Madara’s body lost did you?”

“But how did you know it was him? Was he as bad at blending in as I expected?”

“Well whoever was on laundry duty used the wrong soap on your sheets again and it set off your allergies so he–”

Tobirama cut him off with a howl of laughter, curling in to himself with the force of his mirth. Oh, that was just too good! He knew exactly what it felt like to break out in hives from head to toe and the fact that Madara had suffered through it in his place was the best news he’d ever gotten before eight o’clock in the morning.

After he finally managed to calm down and wipe the tears from his eyes, Tobirama shoved his sibling away and swung his legs out of the bed.

“Well at least _I_ am able to remain hidden when I want to. You’ll never believe the things I learned while I was there. I spoke with a man named Hikaku and – brother, I swear if I hear even one ‘I told you so’ I will cut your hair off in your sleep.”

Hashirama nodded fervently, hands clasped as he leaned forward to receive his good news. He cried a continuous stream of fat joyous tears as Tobirama related everything he had learned from his conversations with both Izuna and Hikaku, as well as the surprisingly friendly attitude he had picked up from his time amongst the Uchiha. Tobirama listened carefully to his sibling’s account of Madara’s adventures here in the Senju compound, snickering behind his hand the whole time, and they talked for hours about how peace seemed finally within their grasp.

And then Hashirama rather cheerfully turned his entire world upside down.

“I still can’t believe it. My brother and my best friend, soulmates!”

Tobirama stared at his brother with wide eyes and a slack jaw.

“We’re what!?”

-

Izuna did not take the news well that he had spent his time yesterday sucking up to Senju Tobirama in his brother’s body, sat next to him at breakfast and cuddled up to his side during dinner. He had even stripped off naked right in front of him to go swimming! When Madara heard about that he wasn’t sure if he was angry, jealous, or amused. Eventually he settled for an unholy combination of all three, which he expressed by swatting his brother around the head.

Then he sent for his finest hawk and called a meeting of the elders. With the sun barely over the horizon it was understandable that most of them were already grumbling discontentedly as they shuffled in to the room. And considering how hard they had been digging in their heels for years over the subject of a ceasefire it was also understandable how loudly they protested when Madara bluntly informed them that he had sent off a formal entreaty for peaceful relations to the Senju just before they all arrived. Izuna clearly wasn’t happy about it either but he was still reeling from having spent an entire day with a disguised Tobirama and coming out of it without getting stabbed even once so he mostly stayed quiet.

As expected, Hashirama replied within the hour with an enthusiastic agreement to meet for their first official overtures of cooperation. The letter had several tear stains on it and the writing changed halfway through as though someone else had to continue where Hashirama grew overwhelmed. Madara rolled his eyes and passed it off to Hikaku with instructions to nose around the clan and gather peoples’ reactions to this development.

Having his childhood dream so close at hand was a thrill he’d been waiting for since he was twelve years old skipping rocks across the Naka River and yet for whatever reason his thoughts turned first to Tobirama, his soulmate. According to Touka the switch never happened for any particular reason or at any particular time. She was older than her cousin and had yet to experience her own switch which would help her identify who her soul was bound to. Apparently many people never did. Madara wondered if there wasn’t a more personal trigger to the event, perhaps that he had reached a point in his life when he might be most receptive to the idea. Or had the universe been waiting on Tobirama instead of himself? There was no way to know for sure.

Waiting a week until their first official meeting felt like the longest seven days of his life, not only because he despised waiting for things but because he spent the entire time fending off the elders and their various ridiculous reasons he should call the whole thing off. By the second day he was already tired of them. By the fifth he was mirroring Hashirama’s hiding spots just to get a few moments of quiet so he could calm the urge to kill them all.

On the seventh day he woke in such a good mood he didn’t even throw anything sharp when Izuna came in to his room at dawn without knocking. They walked to breakfast together and went over all the points that were most important to address right away, the contingency plans for if things went awry, and the other contingency plans for if he needed to rein in his own council. Sadly, the precautions against his own council seemed the more likely to be necessary. The only attack he was likely to get from Hashirama was a tackle hug and a few over-enthusiastic thumps on the back.

His predictions came true almost as soon as they met with the Senju at noon.

Upon catching sight of him and his delegation with no weapons drawn Hashirama immediately leapt towards him with both arms outstretched – only to be met with several active Sharingan and the points of three different swords. Madara rolled his eyes.

“While I appreciate you giving me an excuse to escape another of this buffoon’s endless hugs, I also recall telling you keep your heads and _not display aggression_.”

“Madara-sama he could have been attacking you!”

“It’s Hashirama,” he grunted in return as though that were explanation enough. Sadly, from the suffering expression on every face present, it was.

Luckily his friend wasn’t even close to offended by their wariness and casually waved away some of the members of his own delegation, laughing the whole thing aside as nothing important. He almost casually created a table and chairs for them all to sit together, the Uchiha on one side and the Senju on the other, and invited Madara to speak first.

Hammering out the basics of a peace treaty was boring, no matter that both of them had been waiting for this day for their entire lives. It would have been much more entertaining if they could just skip straight to the building a village part. Somehow their very momentous meeting between rival clan heads became the two of them watching with slightly amused boredom while Tobirama and Hikaku hashed out the basic outline on their treaty. Madara yawned when they handed him his copy to take home for review before they could meet again to discuss all the nitpicky details.

Across the table, Tobirama frowned at him for yawning and Madara shuffled upright in his chair with a scowl of his own, hoping it covered the warmth in his cheeks. Both of them jumped when Hashirama clapped his hands together unexpectedly.

“I brought refreshments! As a gesture of goodwill, may I invite you and your people to dine with us?”

“You’re gonna poison us to be weirdly cheerful like you, aren’t you?” Izuna grumbled. Madara shoved him sideways out of his seat.

While the rest of the gathering began to move around him and head over to the small awning set a little farther down the river, Madara noticed Tobirama heading away in to the tree line, catching his eye before looking away and disappearing behind a copse of redwoods. After checking to make sure no one noticed either of them leaving, he moved to follow.

-

Underneath the outward calm of his never-changing expression, Tobirama’s inside were a swirling mayhem of conflicting desires and confusion. He hadn’t exactly left himself much time to deal with that, however, as Madara came in to his impromptu haven only a couple of minutes after he settled himself back against a tree. The two of them stared at each other warily. Despite knowing that he had been the one to coax the other here Tobirama still had no idea how to open a conversation.

Madara had no such compunctions.

“That terrifying cousin of your informed me of the reason we traded lives for a day,” he said. Tobirama blinked and shifted awkwardly.

“Ah. Yes. It’s a rare enough phenomenon that it slipped my mind until brother mentioned that we are…”

“Soulmates.”

Tobirama coughed, eyes dropping to inspect the other man’s feet. “Yes. That.” It took a few deep breaths to get ahold of himself and look back up again to find Madara watching him with a contemplative look on his distractingly attractive face.

“Does it bother you? Seems like it bothers you.”

“I’m not sure that I would put it like that. We don’t truly know anything about each other so I’m not certain how I feel about this yet.” His attempt at a casual shrug probably looked more like a jerky twitch. They both let it pass. Madara grinned at him and Tobirama’s thoughts derailed as he took in how different the expression made him look: less dangerous, still fierce but in a strangely pleasing way.

“Well I don’t know about you,” Madara said, “but I learned quite a bit from my day in your skin.”

“Forgive me if that doesn’t immediately sound like a good thing to me.”

There were a lot of things hidden in his room and Tobirama felt a ball of lead drop in his stomach at just the thought of Madara finding half of them. Without context or explanation they would hardly give a good impression of him to someone who only knew him in his battle persona.

Relief swept through him when the other man chuckled, followed quickly by trepidation. Laughter wasn’t exactly a good reaction either.

“I don’t know, it did paint you as more of a human being in my eyes. I know you like to play dumb jokes on your brother. I know you make _terrible_ artwork on your budget sheets and hide them in your desk drawers. Nice, by the way. I enjoyed the one of Hashirama with pigtails.”

Tobirama felt his face turning red but could do nothing about it.

“You looked through my private things?” he demanded. Madara scoffed.

“And you read my books! We’re even!”

“I hardly think so! We are far from even, Uchiha. I didn’t go snooping in your desk drawers!”

“Bet you wanted to, though. Bet you thought about it.”

“Fuck you!” There wasn’t much to say when he could hardly deny it. If he hadn’t been constantly interrupted by other people that day then he very well might have gone snooping for delicious secret. His only regret was that he hadn’t found anything big enough to outweigh what the other had found on him in turn.

He was startled when Madara threw back his head and began to laugh. The sound of it was incredibly different when he was hearing it from the outside rather than from the inside; much more pleasing to the ears. Eventually he faded off in to chuckles, petering out further until he was grinning as though he hadn’t a single care in the world, perfectly at ease.

“Call me a heretic for suggesting it but I think I would enjoy getting to know you more,” Madara told him. Tobirama’s eyebrows both lifted and he floundered for a moment.

“That was easier to accomplish than I thought it would be,” he said without thinking. He only realized his mistake when his companion’s grin shifted to something resembling triumph. He looked a great deal like a lion lording over its kill. It was, unfortunately, a good look on him.

“And you’re less difficult to deal with than I thought you’d be. I guess that leaves us even again.”

Madara was moving even before he finished speaking, making to walk passed until Tobirama shot out an arm to stop him and lifted his other finger in preparation of making a point.

Whatever the point was, it was immediately forgotten when Madara covered the small space between them and planted a kiss right on his mouth, taking him completely by surprise. Tobirama froze in place, giving the other the opportunity to escape his grasp and smack his lips as he walked away.

“Yes, very interested in getting to know you better,” he said.

A moment later he was gone, leaving Tobirama alone to stare unseeing at the empty air in front of his face. His jaw hung open without any sound coming out. Both hands hung suspended in midair. It wasn’t often someone managed to render him speechless but there was no other way to describe his current state. All he had wanted was to broach the topic and maybe feel things out between them to see if they might be compatible; getting a kiss hadn’t even crossed his mind.

Worst all, he realized with shaking fingers pressing against his lips, he had liked it.

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to throttle the man or if he wanted to drag him back behind the trees to finish what he had started but either way Tobirama was grateful that peace would soon give him the opportunity for whichever one he chose – or maybe both.


End file.
